Post Your Professor Gripes Here

The BBQ Pit
21

Ugh. I had a Computer Science professor (the class was on compilers) whose lecture style would put a hyperactive 10-year-old to sleep (stolen quote).

And then she had the audacity to hand out an assigment which was: [ul] [li]1 of 5 programming assignments for the semester (so, worth a good deal) []had to be working properly to be graded, and you’d use it later, so it had to be perfect []was due Friday at midnight []did I mention that it was assigned Monday midday? []did I also mention that I had a job interview Saturday morning? Oh, and that Friday was Valentine’s day?[/ul] It the first time I’d ever had a single assignment which was due without a weekend to work on it. The deadline was arbitrary, because the TA’s told me they weren’t going to look at it over the weekend.[/li]
But what sent it over the top was having it due on midnight on Valentine’s Day. When I pointed this out, the TA’s actually suggested that we didn’t have social lives anyway, so why worry? After pointing out that I was married, and that the TA in question was a moron, I left the discussion.

Sigh. It still makes me angry.

22

Maybe there’s just something about a compilers class…
The one I’m in now has 2 TA’s that are fighting over the class:
TA #1: “For this assignment, you are to use Tool A.”

TA #2: “I think that this would be easier using both Tool A and Tool B. Here is how you would do that.”

(later)TA #1: “If you have done any work using Tool B, delete it. Tool B will not be allowed for this assignment. Any project turned in using Tool B will receive no credit.”

(later yet) TA #2: “Not only will Tool B be allowed on this assignment, but using it will get you extra credit.”

Not exactly a professor rant, but close.

23

Well, this one is pretty mild-mannered compared to what some people have posted, but nevertheless it’s driving me nuts:

Dunno about you, professor, but I’ve always thought a graduate class in literature should involve, you know, discussing literature? At least a little bit? With all due respect, your teaching style is not exactly conducive to that sort of thing:

  1. Read passage aloud in middle English. (We have already read the entire work.)

  2. Translate / paraphrase passage in modern English. (We are, for the most part, grad students who specialize in medieval literature. It is pretty safe to assume that we already understand what we’ve read, especially since most of the readings for this class are written in 15th century London dialect, which is a cinch to understand anyway.)

  3. Ask, “What might that suggest?” (Uh, a lot of things.)

  4. Wait fifteen seconds and tell the class what you think it suggests, which is usually something anyone with half a brain has noticed already.

  5. In order to demonstrate the depth of your acquaintance with modern scholarship, quote from The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis.

  6. Read and paraphrase another passage.

  7. Quote Lewis again.

  8. Go off on a tangent about, say, the decline of Anglo-Norman as a literary language. (This might be useful, except it’s the same tangent you went off on last week. And the week before.)

  9. Repeat as necessary, until seven minutes after the class is supposed to end.

Sigh. Only six more weeks to go.

24

Professor “Oh, did I say your midterm exam was going to be structured THIS way? Silly me for having no fucking clue.”'s little gem today:

After handing in my exam (which was kinda, let’s say, not the way he described it at all, but that’s understandable because hey, he hadn’t even written it yet*) today, I got my first paper back.

The deal with the first paper is that I wsa supposed to analyze a poem in the style of someone we had read earlier.

Part 2 of the only essay for our midterm was to compare a poem on the midterm to the preferences of that same “someone.”

Well, yeah. It would have been fucking nice to know that I had a clue about this “someone” before taking the fucking midterm! Or, even, that I didn’t have a clue, so I could possibly get one!

It would also have been nice to know that I would be asked to compare a poem (any poem) to this “someone”'s preferences. Or, you know, to know the format of the essay section, which was barely worth more than the “fill in the blank”-type questions we also got.

I have half a mind to retype the midterm exam questions, put them on my webpage, and compare them to what our prof told us would be on the exam.

I don’t know if this guy is worse, though, than the revisionist wannabe-psychologist english teacher who happened to think he could explain the scientific revolution in half an hour.

::brain explodes::

*Yes, that IS sarcasm dripping from my teeth! How very observant of you!

25

Hey, Fretful, at least you got to hear something actually related to the text, however stupid. My Chaucer professor couldn’t be bothered with the actual content of the course. She was way too busy obsessing over sex. We’d read a story (The Miller’s Tale, for preference), and then discuss the sex in it, whether or not there was any. Yes, there’s plenty of sex in Chaucer, but that wasn’t enough for her, and she made it up when there wasn’t any just lying around for her to pick up.

It was incredibly dull. Sex, sex, sex. (I mean, I like sex as much as anybody, but I don’t find it all that interesting unless I’m personally involved.) All the time. Did we ever discuss society/the role of women/the Church/money/ANYTHING AT ALL besides sex? No. We had a list of possible topics for our major paper, but unless you wrote about sex, you got a bad grade.

26

Little Bird said:

1/2 the class failed the test. (Including me) He wasn’t gonna curve it, but he decided to “give us a break” and then berated us for not studying hard enough. Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but if 1/2 of the class fails your test, it’s not the class’ fault!
Ummm, when I taught college math, 50% of the class would routinely fail the test. These were in the intro courses though, and not the ones where math majors dwelled. Btw, I was known as THE EASY TEACHER!

27

emarkp, maybe this is my limited experience with college speaking (i only went for one year), but aren’t assignments generally turned in during scheduled class times? was your class at midnight? did the prof even have a class at midnight? i don’t recall any building on campus being open at that hour when i was at shsu. well, except the computer lab, which was where i spent nearly every waking hour, which would be why i was only a year in college.

28

This gripe is pretty mild compared to most of the others, but still I need to get it off my chest.

Jizzy fucking creezy Dr. K what the fuck is your malfunction? You come into class 4 1/2 minutes late every single day. After that you take another 4 minutes to adjust the fucking shade that goes over the window when the sunlight doesn’t even shine on this side of the building. Next you have to move all the crap around at the front of the room which takes another minute or two and then finally you start class. I wish that was the end of it but it isn’t. You proceed to talk about crap and repeat the same shit over and over again every single day making me want to grind the ears off of my head with a damned cheese grater. You talk about shit that nobody understands and it isn’t like you explain it in class either. Not to mention the ass backwards way off grading your tests. My fucking definition of the word you wanted was perfect word for word minus the word pure. Why the fuck did you take away 3 points for that eh? Don’t get me started on the shit that you just make up in class. You start talking about “squackles” and the class moans collectively. And back to you wasting time. I’ve figured it up and you waste roughly 22-25 minutes each day of a 50 minute class. That is half the fucking time. Fuck!

Okay so maybe it wasn’t so mild after all.

29

I don’t knwo what emarkp’s professors do, but here, sometimes we have to email our homeworks in to the professors or post them to a bulletin board. They can make them due any time that they want.

30

Abuse angel, it’s common for computer science assignments to be turned in through email or otherwise electronically, since they’re usually code to be run. A paper copy wouldn’t do anyone any good. Additionally, CS computer labs are often open 24/7. So it doesn’t matter what time the deadline is, and midnight is a common time to set it. Hope that makes sense.

31

Missus Feminist Black Panther Hippie English Teacher Lady?

Um, I’m sure you’re a very nice person.

And I’m sure you’re an excellent teacher.

And I’m sure your experiences in the late '60s were extremely interesting and very informative.

But I’m also sure that the class is supposed to be about American literature, not the history of the counterculture. So can we get back to the reading now?

Oh, and by the way, everyone in the class is now aware that I’m a Yankee. We’ve covered my New York background twice a week every week since before Labor Day. So… um… can we get back to the reading now?

32

My Evil Feminist Black Panther Hippie English Teacher also obsesses over sex. She finds sexual references in EVERYTHING. In one now-famous lecture, she insisted on finding phallic symbols in every aspect of a particular story, from the heels on a character’s boots to the fucking STREET LAMPS. Now whenever I’m out with people I know from English class we giggle when we walk under street lamps with two bulbs…

33

Oops. typo. I did indeed forget the all-important “not.”

34

:eek:

I’ve had this professor. He teaches Chaucer at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and his name is Eyvind Ronquist.

and if it’s not the same guy, then I’m going to be really, really frightened.

35

Reading the other related thread(Student gripes) and receiving my last paper made me write this.

I’m taking an English composition class (Writing about literature). My problems with the teacher?

  1. Does not explain clearly what he wants us to write about. Granted, pretty lame since he admits it and one can go to see him at his office hours, which brings second point. Also related to this is something that Fretful posted in the other thread about students using impersonal sentences. Sadly, that is the way many students have been taught, and unless the professor tells me otherwise, that is the way I am going to write. Guess what? The professor didn’t tell us that. Ouch!

  2. His office hours are at a coffee lounge just outside of campus. I don’t mind being in a nice comfy place, but that is not a nice comfy place, nor a place where I feel fine enough to talk about my grades or works. It has the standard coffee shop tables and chairs(small, hard, and uncomfy). There is no privacy…sure no one is paying attention but I don’t feel good talking about grades or work when everyone can hear the conversation.

  3. Says he likes creativity, but when I wrote a poem he corrected it. Damn it, its my poem and if I want it to have strange grammar or sentence structure, so be it!!! Don’t correct it as if it was wrong! :mad: (I must say, before doing this paper, we had to read a whole chapter about poetic form, including a part titled open form that dealt with unconventional structures.)

  4. Related to the above one, and this was something I didn’t thought about until the other students told me. This is a writing for literature class, not a technical writing course. Yet he expects everything to be organized that way, and corrects that way too. I say I didn’t notice because English is not my first language, and I thought that was the normal way to correct. Seems not, according to the other students who have taken other English courses at the same university.

  5. I once gave him a rough draft of my paper. I had changed some things and had my doubts on the grammar and content. (Please keep in mind that I had run spell check and it said it was ok, plus the fact that English is not my first language and I can’t notice grammar errors that are obvious to others.) I asked him to please go through some parts, and tell me if there was something I should change. He looked over it, gave some suggestions, but didn’t tell me if there was something wrong. Two weeks later, I receive my paper corrected. The part that I asked him to please check and give insight? Eh, that’s the part marked with red ink. :rolleyes:

  6. His comment of going around to ask for help in grammar doesn’t seem to work. My roomates checked one of my essays. Got a D on that one. Went to the writing and reading center, they checked another paper. Still had some grammar errors. I give them to classmates during workshops, they can’t find any error.

sigh…There, I vented. Feeling much better. :slight_smile: I would like to add that he is the only bad professor I have this semester. The chemistry lecture teacher is not too bad, except when she talks about giving us quizzes and her face suddenly lights up and has a happy expression. :eek: And I only have praises to give to my chemistry TA and lab instuctor. :smiley:

36

Professor: “Kill your babies.”

Lolo: “Fuck you, I like my babies!”

37

NEI! (as opposed to tmi.)

38

Killing your babies is a writing term for striking out words/sentences/paragraphs/pages you really like but don’t actually fit with what you’re trying to achieve. It’s one of the toughest things you can do as a writer.

39

You want anti-professor rants? I got your rants right here…

I am required to take this class on research design, or how to write your thesis. Fine, although this is the only department that REQUIRES such a class. I’m not really ready to pick a topic yet, but since the class is only offered once a year, it’s now or, well, next year. We had to turn in a literature review for our topic last week. I guess I should have actually read that TWO-FOOT HIGH stack of books in my office, in the week since the last big writing assignment you gave us. In short, he trashed my review. I could have done a better job of it if I wasn’t working, spending 1.5 hours a day commuting, and if I hadn’t had three twsts the same week, all rescheduled from earlier in the semester, including ONE FROM ANOTHER CLASS TAUGHT BY THE SAME PROFESSOR. My nice GPA is about to tank because of this. I had explained earlier to him that there was no previous research that I could find in this exact area, the topic was not controversial, hence no issues to debate, and I could find no good examples of this type of lit review. His attitude was, “So, how is this my problem?”

I’m thinking of changing my major to a department with more than 5 professors in it.

Sorry for the one long paragraph. I hate professors who think that theirs is the only class, and you should have at least 24 hours a day to devote to it, so get cracking.

40

Oo. I have one this term.

She is a world renowned feminist writer, who teaches psychology of religion…

I have issues with her. Badly.

She intimidates students, puts them on the spot, makes nasty comments about them (even when they are NOT there!) - last week, one of our students was absent, and her comment was: “I hope he dropped the class because he didn’t do well on his midterm.” - midterm which she was about to hand out. She is SUCH a PAIN!

Problem is, there are two camps: those who worship her (usually young females who think she’s funny and assertive) and the rest of us who are scared shitless by her.

She had decided I would do poorly on my midterm because I missed a class. She marked my midterm accordingly. I’m raising a fuss about it - mine is the only one she marked herself, the others were marked by the TA (who is a classmate of mine in another class and therefore couldn’t really mark my test…) I’m asking for a review by another prof.

Gah!

Elly